Will I Ever Have A Friend?
by Do-Op
Summary: The scene in the hallway after Charms, told from Hermoines point of view. (UPDATED NOVE-18-2004!)


Disclaimer: I do not even own the scene. Too bad, so sad. I own not the Harry Potter Universe, nor J.K. Rowling. Scholastic, Bloomsbusry, & Associates - I don't know them, so obviously they don't support this effort.

Title: Will I Ever Have A Friend?

I wasn't trying to be annoying; anything but, in fact. I was just so upset at myself for ignoring everything...and the somewhat-less-than-perfect grade I had just recieved on my Defense Against the Dark Arts homework hadn't helped.  
I realize, after thinking it over for a time, that I have been a ruddy heel ever since Harry joined the quidditch team, ever since I met him, really. But I don't see why they are allowed take the rules so lightly. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were using Harry's fame to bend the rules, and that Professor McGonagall was letting them. I would like to be able to say that Professor McGonagall would never let them do that. I would like to, but I can't.  
**He** doesn't understand how I feel, he doesn't know. And if I have it my way he never will. A creep like Ron Weasley doesn't deserve my affections, but he has them – if unknowingly – anyway. There would be no way, even if he wasn't so awful, that we could have a chance. After all, not even the most advanced magic I know could bring together the best friend of the most popular person in school, and a bookworm. But even if he never knew I cared, I would settle to be his friend.  
That's why his words after Charms hurt so much.

"She's a nightmare, honestly" What is so wrong with me? Just because I care about doing things right doesn't make me any less of a person! I have feelings just the same as he does! Does he think I can't hear him when he makes comments like that?  
I should have told him that. I should have been stronger...but I can't! This is just like back in Carsbury. I'm being stripped down, reduced to nothing but awful comments. But I couldn't tell him. I couldn't say or do anything but cry.

I remember the first day I really realized I was different. I was in 3rd form, and Thomas Garret asked me if I was related to the beaver that stuffy Mrs. Talon was showing pictures of to the class. I had such a crush on Thomas. Deep as is possible for a nine-year-old I suppose, because you know that I didn't know anything about anything back then. Being able to recite my times tables was a huge achievement.

And I cried, I don't know why, but I couldn't stop. The teacher felt so bad for me that she called mum and had me go home for the day. Not that it helped any, I just cried there as well. All over mum's nice new suit, that she had bought to look professional for hers and dad's new dental practice; on my dinner, on my pillow in my bed. She spent all afternoon attempting to make me feel better, to give me some gem of hope that I wasn't a beaver-look-alike.

"One day, you'll grow into them." She said, petting my hair, trying to make it sit down flat and stopping, as she always did when it wouldn't behave. "One day, you'll wake up, and you'll be so beautiful. When you've grown up." _But I don't want wait until I'm grown!_ I wanted to scream at her. _Why do I have to wait to look pretty?_

"I hate this." Was what I settled for, with all the vehemence a nine-year-old can muster. "Why can't you fix me, mum? Why can't I look like everyone else?"

"Hermione-" I hated the patient way she said my name, as if I wasn't ready to hear what she was saying, as if I couldn't understand, and I dissolved into tears again. "-You are unique and special. And someday you are going to find someone, someone who doesn't want you to be a carbon copy of every other pretty woman out there. Someone who will love you, and forever, just for being who you are."

I knew that, somewhere, I still know it. But I also hate it. I hate it with the fervor and pitch of a child being forced to eat their vegetables when the promise of ice cream and biscuits looms just over the pile of sprouts.  
I felt then...I still feel...ridiculous. I had held up under worse teasing than Ron's before, but it hurt more coming from him than it had from Thomas, or anyone else, even. Maybe that was only because Ron's wound was still fresh. Still bleeding a little. I felt my cheeks flush as the tears dripped uncontrollably from my eyes, and ashamed of having made a scene in the hallway, I rushed to the restroom, wanting desperately to just be left alone. Maybe this wretched school would just let me be miserable in peace.  
Replaying the scene in my head, I'm almost positive that I bumped into Harry on the way down, and if I did...well, that just makes the whole brilliant situation even _better_, doesn't it?  
The bathroom is empty. I know it, you know. I know a lot of the school by now. It's Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. The stories about her are so romantic. The girls in the dormitories say that she was once a student here, and fell in love with another student. They say that when he turned her away, spurned her for an older girl, she hid in the girls loo to cry, and died – right there in the stall! – of a broken heart. So she haunts that second floor bathroom to this very day, to warn off those who would do the same.

Of course, I'd only been in the bathroom once before. Ghosts, while interesting, were most definitely not something I was comfortable with on a daily basis, after the Sir Nicholas' observations at dinner on our first night. I made the mistake of confiding this in Molly, the girl on the far side of the dormitory, and she and her friends locked me in here after lunch on the second Monday of school. Somehow though, this is where my feet have taken me, and so I am using the rusty, unkempt, leaky bathroom as my sanctuary.

The irony inherent in my actions is plain to me, though in front of anyone else I would scoff at it. I have come to cry over scorn from one I love, just as Myrtle did. I wonder what she was thinking before she died. Did she know? Did she take one last look in the mirrors and decide that she had nothing to live for?

That's where I am now, staring at my reflection in the mirror of the second floor girls loo. And it doesn't matter how grown up I am, it doesn't matter how hard I try, I still look awful. My brown hair is so...bushy, no act of God could make it lay straight. My cheeks are flushed and tearstained and my teeth are far too big. And that's only what you can see. There's no room in my head for anything but facts, information. There's no space for anyone else, because I can't be bothered to be sociable. God, it's no wonder everyone hates me, what with my temperament and my looks.  
I'm looking in the mirror in the girl's bathroom. The girl looking back is a brain, with a less-than-satisfactory looks. And as I continue to look at this girl, myself, in this mirror, I wonder:  
Will I ever have a friend?


End file.
